The MECA Project Reasoning Agents on Mars Leo Breebaart (S&T) 12 October 2006

1. The MECA Project Reasoning Agents on Mars Leo Breebaart(S&T)12 October 2006

2. The MECA Consortium TNO Human Factors • Human behaviour and performance in technical high-demand environments; methods to attune the environment to (momentary) human capacities. S&T bv • Software development company with specific expertise on creating system health management applications. OK Systems • Software development company focusing on technology areas of AI, user interfaces, databases and web-based systems (specially scheduling systems). EADS-ST • Technologies, development, production and utilization of manned and unmanned space missions, including experiments, space transportation systems, propulsion systems and support of these systems concerning operations, maintenance and mission handling.

3. Project Goal The MECA Project aims to: • Provide support to and increase autonomy of astronauts while: • Executing complex tasks • In a hostile and large unknown environment • Possibly disconnected from Mission Control

4. Objective & Vision Objective: support mission goals (without injury or loss of life) by • empowering the cognitive capacities of human-machine teams during planetary exploration missions. • in order to cope autonomously with unexpected, complex and potentially hazardous situations. Vision: crew support that • acts in a ubiquitous computing environment • as “electronic partner”, helping the crew • to assess the situation, • to determine a suitable course of actions to solve a problem, • to safeguard the astronaut from failures.

5. MECA and Agents Where does agent technology fit in? • A MECA System can be considered as an instance of a group of software agents. • The MECA Architecture will make use of the outcome of agent technology research.

6. This presentation • Phase 1 (2005-2006) • “MECA 2017” • RB: Requirements Baseline • Phase 2 (2006-2007) • “MECA 2007” • Demonstrator Prototype • Refined RB

7. Why the need for support? • Current astronaut support rather antiquated. • Long-distance manned explorations impose new challenges.

8. Background

9. State of the Art Our legacy:… Operational Procedures Hardcopy + LAPAP SCOPE But MECA should extend this….

10. MECA design process Background • Operability-based design • Anticipate new Intelligent Interfaces • Anticipate new HFE standard Approach • Human-Operation centered • Enabling Technology focus • Iterative process (specify-test-refine cycles) • From abstract to detailed specifications • Sound theoretical and empirical foundation 10 -- 25 yrs

11. Example Scenario Human and System Health Management

12. = MECA unit EVA 2 astronauts 2km from habitat, sample collection for scientific experiment. Habitat

13. MECAindicates a problem with the temperature regulation of one of the space suits. Habitat

14. Astronaut, MECA and spacesuit collaborate on finding the cause of the failure. • MECA interrogates spacesuit to obtain more parameters for diagnosis. Habitat

15. The heater of the space suit is damaged and cannot be repaired locally. Habitat

16. MECAsimulates the consequences of the broken heater. • MECA predicts that astronaut has to be brought to habitat and has a risk of fainting. Habitat

17. Astronaut's MECA Unit and Habitat MECA Unit reschedule and plan safe return. • Habitat is preparing for treatment of hypothermic astronaut (preparing and activating resources) • Astronaut MECA asks for help of transporting astronaut (since he is likely to faint) Habitat

18. MECA Roversrespond to call for help, MECA habitat chooses rover • MECA habitat chooses rover that has enough power/resources to pick astronaut up and transport to habitat (fuel, location, speed, pressurized or unpressurized rover etc.). Habitat

19. MECAcommunicates adjusted schedule to astronaut(s) in the right manner (keeping in mind cognitive task load). • Hypothermic astronaut has a high task load due to high stress levels, MECA Unit shall adapt communication according to task load and affective state. • The astronaut accompanying him can be given information in a different manner. Habitat

20. Astronaut faints before rover arrives. MECAcommunicates fainting of astronaut. Habitat

21. Astronaut has fainted earlier than predicted, MECA rover has to find a way to pick up astronaut (sensemaking). Habitat

22. MECAof fainted astronaut and other astronaut collaborate to get fainted astronaut in rover Habitat

23. Hypothermic astronaut is transported to habitat by rover. Habitat

24. Hypothermic astronaut is in habitat being treated. Habitat

25. Iterative Requirements Analysis

26. Operational Demands MECA shall take account of: • the high-level operation goals • e.g., safe return to earth • the environment • e.g., radiation and social monotony • task performance • e.g., people will get seriously ill

27. Human Factors Demands • Cognitive Task Load • Situation Awareness and Sense Making • Diversity of Cognitive Capacities • Trust and Emotion • Collaboration • Crew Resource Management • Decision Making

28. Envisioned Technology (1) An infrastructure will be available for automatic distribution of data, software and reference documents.

29. Envisioned Technology (2) • MECA shall make use of this infrastructure and can cope with possible failures • Continuous analysis and extrapolation of emerging technologies, e.g. • multi-agent systems • automatic planning and scheduling • model-based health management • Technical requirements, such as • maturity • graceful degradation • maintainability • fault tolerance

30. Requirements Baseline Generic task level requirements • Implement key Human Factor knowledge. • Enhance autonomy of individual actors and groups of actors. • Support collaboration among the different actors. • Hardware and software systems must be highly reliable. • Manage environmental information.

31. Current Requirements • Different types of requirements: • task level, • functional, • user interface, • technical interface, • operational and • technical requirements. • All requirements are linked to use cases.

32. Use Case Template

33. Outline of Functional Requirements

34. Incremental and Iterative Prototyping • Human-, task- and context-driven design and evaluation. • Both MECA and the humans will show mutual adaptive behaviour, which effects should be well tested with realistic scenarios. • Prototyping, simulation and testing is therefore essential to establish a sound and coherent set of requirements. • A game-based simulation environment can provide an effective platform for testing the human-machine collaboration (e.g. the Unreal Tournament game-engine) in combination with other simulators.

35. Evaluation Criteria • Long-term human in the loop effects • Standard usability measures • effectiveness • efficiency • satisfaction • learnability • Human experience measures, such as • situation awareness (perception, comprehension and projection) • trust (persistence and behavioural competence, servitude, and the understanding of the machine) • emotion (arousal and valence)

36. Break? • Break!

37. Background Reasoning will involve complex system behaviorand scarce resources

38. Background • Time is a scarce resource • Control of a wide array of tasks and experiments • Control of each task and experiment is complex • Nominal -- Correct sequence of steps • Off-nominal -- Detect, isolate, and compensate failures • Summary: • Optimize crew time by supporting control activities • Check plan execution • Support control of complex equipment especially in the case of malfunctions • Resource usage

39. Understand Act Human decision making • Situational awareness, e.g.: • Warning: At current rates, resources will be depleted within two days… • Must reduce load by 10% but must also generate more oxygen… • I lowered the consumption, but I still don’t see any change.. plan MECA Unit Process UnderControl Complex, uncertain, and dangerous world

40. Traditional support Based on operational procedure and Mission Control Operational procedure: action off-nominal proceduresguided bymission control Not okay verify okay Next action

41. Operational procedures Off-nominal: Fault detection, isolation, repair • Operational procedures: • Huge pile of papers • No feedback of payload Nominal control

42. The 2017 MECA system • The 2017 MECA system helps the astronaut to make the right decisions in situations that : • Are novel, or near-novel, e.g., because equipment is failing • Are complex, e.g., effects of the decision are hard to predict • Intricate interactions between processes, systems, components, … • The effects are noticeable only late in time • Require human--human and human--machine cooperation

43. Understand Act Automated support • Determine alternative plan (e.g., repair, reconfiguration) • Improve situational awareness by interpretation measurement data, in particular: fault diagnosis plan • High level plan --> control action • Monitor plan execution MECAUnit Process UnderControl

44. Automated support Automatic (re)plan Automatic fault detection and isolation Adequate repair procedurespresentation of background info Validate success of plan step

45. pre pre pre post post post Automated support • Operational procedure is generalized by Actions of a Plan • Plan describes pre- and postconditions • Postconditions used for verification plan step and diagnosis • Automated diagnosis • Automated reconfiguration (repair, or redundancy management) Supply pressure to fuel and oxidizer Pb = high

46. Layered Reasoning

47. Understand Act Understand Act 2017 MECA: Collaboration I need your capabilities to repair the equipment PUC Resource level fromteam mate is enough tocomplete task… Process UnderControl

48. Plan-based Architecture

49. collaboration plan MMI CTL (simulated) PUC MECA Unit Functional Decomposition planning & scheduling (PS) procedure executor (PE) derive capabilities (SA) model what-if simulation & rehearsal (PR) sense- making inter- face to other MECA units health & status monitoring (FDIR) execution monitoring (SM) use cases reconfiguration (CO) status + history resource manager health monitoring other MECA units physical equipment/facility interface (DA)

50. Software Architecture